Not Found
by Tonko
Summary: Tron Uprising. Beck goes to look for Bodhi.


A/N: Given that programs are apparently made of glass and the they are killed almost idly by the Black Guard and _for fun_ in the arenas, and given that Clu can't make new ones and would thus have a finite source if there wasn't any kind of renewal... Well, this occurred to me.

* * *

**Not Found**

It wasn't done. Even imagining it was - inappropriate - wrong - _painful _- Beck shook his head, where he crouched on the walkway above the city center bike garage. He didn't feel any of that but the last one, now. His grief and his anger did away with the rest of it.

Because Bodhi was gone.

And Zed told him. Mara told him. "Don't look," they said. "_Don't_ look for him."

Able found him not much later. "You will, won't you. Guess, we all do, least once," he remarked, unhappy and momentarily distant. "And we can try to tell you why you shouldn't, but..." he sighed, put a hand against Beck's shoulder, palm pressing over the broad circuit there in a rare comforting grip. "Well. We'll be here."

Beck looked, of course. And he found him - of course. Same program; part of the city's operating system. Bodhi had been a mechanic. So - Bodhi was a mechanic.

And there he was.

His face was exactly as it had been, and the white stripe still marked his shaggy hair. He was crouched by a rezzed lightcycle-newer luxury model, purely city riding-attentively listening to another program. She had light brown skin, spiky black hair and thin, precise circuits with angled cyan accents. Her bearing reminded Beck of Able. The boss, then. She was demonstrating the use of a tool and Bodhi was watching with a patience Beck had never ever seen him show. Bohdi's energy levels had always been too high for it.

Beck dropped from the platform, apologized to a startled sector repair program who was defragmenting an old sidewalk panel, and crossed to the garage hangar.

They both stood as he approached, and Beck kept his face and circuits calm while the boss greeted him, and Bodhi just looked deferentially on.

There was no recognition there. There couldn't be and Beck knew that, had known all along, but experiencing it made the hollow ache at his core sharpen at the edges. He tried not to stare too long at Bodhi's suit, traced with broad, mild-looking lines instead of the sharper, narrow ones from before, now accented with pale green instead of red.

"Greetings, program, I am Edell. This is Bodhi."

Bodhi nodded politely as his name was spoken, far too serene for Beck's taste. There was none of the restive, impatient spark that Beck had known.

On the surface, well... he was the same program; of course he was. The name and appearance remained, naturally. And even if Beck could've made himself pretend that the circuitry had been re-skinned, or the personality was an act... beneath it all, under skin and interface, Beck's polite ping returned the identification data in Bodhi's code. His process ID was not obfuscated and it wasn't hidden. It was different.

The information dug itself into Beck's memory with sharp pressure, like a disc would use to carve bits out of a wall.

Before the delay of his reaction made him look glitchy, Beck recovered. "I just need a tune-up." He offered his baton.

"Sure thing," Edell stepped back, though. "Bodhi, care to handle this one?"

"Yes... of course!"

His circuits brightened slightly with his enthusiasm. The hesitation and willingness both were so... earnest, as Bodhi took the baton, handling it with both the certainty of his programming and the cautious fascination of the very young.

And that sight stung, crackled pain right through Beck, as bad as docking a chipped disc. Bodhi was not a lightcycle, he was not a suit or a console or a building, something that could be restored like some common file to the way it was before.

The Grid maintaining function and form did not make it _him_.

Edell was speaking. "He's new, as you can tell, but he's good. Mind if he does your tune-up? I'll be right here to supervise."

"Yeah... okay." Beck confirmed, and was able to frown as they both turned away. Bodhi activated the baton to rezz the lightcycle while Edell observed his careful but sure manipulation of the bike's system interface. Beck watched him work.

Bodhi had seen this lightcycle before. Had had his hands in it many times. Loser did the maintenance, in their races, and they all knew each others' bike code perfectly.

But Bodhi didn't anymore. His history was cleared, memory purged. The settings and the mods Beck had installed were surprises. The speed mod Bodhi himself had designed and kept updated this past cycle was met with an impressed noise, and Beck had to look away.

So he stopped watching him feel his way through the bike and found himself staring at the disc docked on Bodhi's back instead.

The disc Beck had held, before, the one he'd thrown and caught whenever he'd bested Bodhi in their games, the one he'd picked up when Tessler's guard had shattered Bodhi on that field... that disc would not sync even if Beck were to replace the one Bodhi wore now.

If he could have, if he'd had Admin powers...? To overwrite someone was as good as de-rezzing them.

"These mods work well together. Hardly anything to adjust. It looks really good!" Bodhi said cheerfully, elbows-deep in the bike, smoothing his fingers over the components and bringing up this or that string of code in a series of final checks. "Right?" he looked to Edell.

She nodded. Bodhi shut down the interface, derezzed the bike, and held out the baton, smiling bright and new and Beck wouldn't come back here again.

Able's expression was knowing when Beck returned. He said nothing, didn't ask, but his look of understanding managed to take the crumbling edge off Beck's mood, whatever mood it was-he wasn't sure anymore. It was anger, but cold, with Clu's massive statue right in its path.

He got back to work, and kept at it, the lag of distraction not preventing him making good headway on a damaged buggy, until, much later, Zed and Mara came up on either side of him.

"That's long enough," Zed said, grabbing his arm. He squeezed, warm over the circuit, and didn't let go, just tugged until Beck turned off his visor and stood up. Mara hooked her elbow through his on the other side.

"Out, out. No more work for now," she said, and they steered him outside.

He wasn't likely to be good company. "Guys, I don't - "

"Brood if you want, just do it with us," Mara interrupted.

"Rather not have to act like we lost you too," Zed added testily. He was still holding Beck's arm, though.

"You didn't," Beck told him. Zed grumbled wordlessly. Mara turned, aiming the three of them at the little energy bar nearby. Beck let himself be pulled along while they talked across him. And it was just like always, but there was a voice missing now.

That statue was still there, at their field.

Not for much longer.


End file.
